


glissade

by the_dot



Series: you can't run from the shadow [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Magic, RIP, SHE WILL BE APPEARING MUCH MORE THAN I THOUGHT SHE WOULD A YEAR AND A HALF AGO, Unbeta'ed, Witchcraft, also wtf it's been a year and a half since i worked on this story, as always, bangs pots and pans together I LOVE LIL SO MUCH, i hope lil comes off the way i want her to
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2019-04-30 03:35:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14487963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_dot/pseuds/the_dot
Summary: (or: lil cusses a lot)There's a newborn witch in Lil's store, and she probably shouldn't be there.





	glissade

**Author's Note:**

> *crawls out of a hole* i'm alive  
>  this might not make sense if you haven't read the other two works in this series, and possibly not if you haven't been inside my head and looked at the Hot Mess that is the universe this is set in. let me know?  
>  nolonger4amedit: this is just. echappe from Lil's pov. I forgot to say that, and also to put it in the series.

The bullshit starts when Lil hears a  _ whoosh-thunk  _ that means someone’s come through a portal.

_ It’s a customer, _ her familiar tells her.  _ I think. She feels weird. _

_ Thanks, Loka.  _ Lil pokes her head up over the counter. A smallish girl with dark hair stands grimacing in the middle of the floor, dressed in that way that says  _ don’t fuck with me _ that Lil’s never quite been able to pull off and —wait.

Lil looks at the girl’s feet. “Are those boots non-marking?”

The girl glances down. “Uh. Probably not.”

“Take them off,” Lil says, standing fully, and—she probably sounds like a bitch, but  _ honestly.  _ Who comes into a witch’s shop with boots that make marks?

_ A human,  _ Loka laughs from her perch on the counter.  _ Not everyone was born a witch. _

_ Whatever.  _ The girl’s still looking at her, so she adds, “My mother will  _ kill _ me if her sigils are stained again.”

The girl does as she’s asked, and visions of having to redo the entire floor—again—vanish from Lil’s mind. She smiles.

“Welcome to the Point,” Lil says, and introduces herself. “What’s your name?”

“Aina Ruiz,” she says. Lil wants to ask who her family is, who her teacher is, who told her about the portal entrance because Lil had thought that was dismantled before she was even born, but Aina has a guarded look in her eye, so she bites her lip and doesn’t say anything.

“What can I help you with?”

Aina digs a list out of her pocket, and Lil takes it and—huh. She’s missing a  _ lot. _

_ Beginner,  _ Loka reminds her, jumping down to follow Lil to the storeroom.

She invites Aina to wait because it reeks like the bowels of hell, but sees her after a moment, trying to discreetly hold her sleeve over her face and failing. She comes to a stop under a skylight.

_ She’s got guts, _ Loka says, cleaning a paw.  _ How does she know that she won’t step in something nasty? _

“When did you start practicing?” Lil asks as she carefully places herbs and oils in a large bag, and Aina looks surprised. “No self-respecting witch would have  _ run out  _ of all this—” how do you not have  _ rosemary _ , she thinks,  _ everyone  _ has rosemary “—and if they did they wouldn’t pick it all up at the same shop.”

Aina shifts uncomfortably, her dark eyes darting across the room. “A week ago,” she mumbles.

Lil blinks. “Really? Who told you to come here?”

The real question is  _ who told a goddamned newborn to come through a portal,  _ because portal travel is one of the most draining things you can do, and if you do it wrong you could end up somewhere in China missing your limbs. Loka’s watching her, too, waiting for an answer.

“A grimoire,” Aina says, and  _ wow,  _ that’s dumb.  There had to be at least one cautionary tale in popular culture about not listening to a magic book . “It said this was the best place.”

_ Lil, _ Loka hisses into her mind, and her fear prickles the base of Lil’s skull.  _ Look at her. _

Lil looks back at Aina, and almost drops the jar she’s holding.

When Aina walked in, Lil could see her soul—soft and fluttering but mostly just weak, which is normal for an untrained human, but now—

The storeroom is bright with sun and the magic woven into every inch of the wood, but there’s a void where Aina is standing, leeching the color out of the room, and when Lil tries to find a soul—

_ Nothing,  _ Lil says, and then, _ where is her soul, it was there when I looked at her last, it’s gone, that doesn’t make  _ sense—

Loka pushes Lil back into herself, and she realizes that Aina’s been looking at her. She frowns in what she hopes is a thoughtful and not a  _ well, fuck _ way. “ I get that you’re new to this, but next time a book tells you to go somewhere,  _ maybe don’t do it _ . Or at least check with an older wix. Where do you live? I can get you a list of registered teachers in your county.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Aina says, and Lil can see her soul again, but just barely, and there’s a trace of terror in her eyes. “Thank you.”

_....Do I have the time, mana, and brainspace to investigate this right now? _ she asks Loka dully, wrapping the last of the herbs and putting them in the bag.

_ No, yes, and no,  _ Loka replies.  _ If you ignore me I will tell your mother. _

_ Dammit. _ Lil holds out the bag and puts on the sunniest smile she can manage. “Here you go. You might want to use both hands.”

She may or may not shove it a little too forcefully, just to see if Aina makes an expression, which she does. There’s no more fear, and her magic is back to the almost-nonexistent level that it was when she came in.

Lil entertains the hope that she was just incredibly bored and her overactive imagination had bled over to Loka.

_ You’re smarter than that, _ Loka chastises, jumping up onto the table. They’re both still buzzing with fear.

Lil cards her fingers through Loka’s fur. “Go out the side door,” she tells Aina. “You’ll be dropped wherever you came in.”

“Oh —uh.” Aina looks vaguely bewildered now, but that doesn’t mean anything, maybe she’s just easily startled. “Thank you.” Aina pays her quickly and leaves. As soon as she steps out the door, it’s easier to breathe.

_ Okay, _ Lil thinks.  _ So maybe we just had a possessed customer. What do we do? _

Loka hesitates.  _...Tell your parents and let them worry about it? _

_ Maybe they’ll stop making us take shifts ,  _ Lil muses.  _ Alright, solid plan, let’s go. _

 

**Author's Note:**

> some notes:  
> \- eventually this series is probably going to be condensed into one work, because when i started it was intended to be a slice-of-life type thing about Aina learning how to use magic and the shadow/shade/etc learning how to be less shitty, but then Lil appeared and reminded me that she absolutely would have noticed someone getting possessed on her home turf and Plot appeared.  
> \- i hope Lil doesn't come across as a mary-sue type or whatever you want to call it--sensing souls is a thing most witches in this universe can do, although usually familiars aren't quite as sapient as Loka (which will be explored, eventually, probably, _maybe_ ). aina is just very very new at magic. lil was born into it.  
> \- i'm,,,,not 100% happy with this? but i wrote for the first time in forever and that's something. i'll probably come back to edit later.  
> i'm on tumblr at the-dot and dottywords, come say hi!


End file.
